You have the dream of living more self-sufficiently, living off the land, growing and raising your own food. You’re not alone! There are lots of others moving to live free from the grocery store and grow their own food, read on to learn how to get started homesteading with an inexpensive homestead garden.
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Life of a Homesteader
I found a wonderful quote a couple of months back by Arthur Ashe, I use it more to motivate me for exercising but I think the quote works incredibly well for someone who wants to start gardening or homesteading. So let me read you the quote:
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” It fits very nicely with my husband’s grandfather’s saying “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
It’s a great reminder that you don’t need all the things to homestead or start a garden. Start small and build on what you have and your successes.
So let’s break down a homestead garden which is where most people on the homesteading journey start and let’s talk about where you could start where you are, use what you have, and do what you can.
Start Where You Are
The first thing for a homestead garden is finding a spot in your yard that gets the most light. Plants need lots of light to grow well and fruit and vegetables are going to grow best in a position where you get more than 8 hours of light in the growing season. The goal of this isn’t to get complicated it is just to get you started so if this is your first garden, find where you get the most light in your yard and focus on that.
Use What You Have
So we’re going to use whatever you have available to you to start your garden. If you have a load of cardboard because you just moved house or relocated across the country again for a new job then you can totally put that cardboard to use making a no-dig garden. Use that cardboard to smother the grass and weeds. But if you don’t have a house full of cardboard, don’t sweat it! Go for a dig garden instead!
I’m determined to video starting a garden so I can show you step by step building a no-dig and an intensive dig garden. I’m just waiting to the snow to melt which I’m hopeful is on the way now the days are getting longer. It is going to be interesting because my yard is a north-facing slope so it’s going to be fun learning how to make this garden thrive! Anyways I digress, back to use what you have.
You might be thinking “Um, Emma what is a dig garden?” Well my friend a dig garden is one where you are going to dig or till. So grab a gardening fork and a shovel maybe a helper or two. You push the gardening fork or shovel into the ground with your foot, pull back on the handle to lift the soil out. Turf, weeds, soil the lot. Some gardeners just put that first turfy layer to one side then put the garden fork back into the ground and lift out a fork full or a shovel full of soil. Turn it upside down, put a garden fork back in, and break the soil up a bit then put the turfy bit of soil back on top but with the grassy turfy bit facing down. This is so the grass and weeds will break down and decompose, feeding the soil.
Other gardeners do the same thing but they will take out the grass and the weeds, carefully pulling out the roots. Sending those to steep in a bucket of water for a few weeks to kill off the tenacious weeds before putting them into the compost heap.
Feeding the Soil
If you have compost or other soil amendments available to you, maybe well-rotted chicken manure or you were lucky to find a stable that feeds their horses organic feed so there are no residue pesticides, you can compost their manure. If you have them available to you then if you want to use them, you would dig those into the soil to help distribute it along the garden bed. But if you don’t have them don’t sweat it! You don’t have to use them. Same with green manures or cover crops, if you have them and want to use them, great but if you don’t, don’t worry about it! Use what you have don’t worry about running out to buy all the things. Homesteaders typically use what they have.
How do I dig a garden? Well, I’ll be honest, I like to pull the weeds out. But, having to make larger garden beds is making me think about the turf down method for speed. I know that using the turf down will still mean that there is weeding to do before I can get planting as not everything will die off and decompose but that leads me nicely to our final point.
Do What You Can
Growing your own food isn’t a race. It has taken me a lot of trial and error to grow vegetables, fruit, and herbs and even now it’s not always a sure thing! The best advice I can give anyone who is wanting to grow their own food is to do it! Try a small garden bed and a couple of veggies you really like to eat. There is nothing wrong with starting small and keeping things manageable. It is quite daunting to be going from the side yard we had in suburban Utah to growing on at least half an acre in rural Maine. It was kinda scary when I got my first allotment in my early 20s in England.
But you do what you can when you can.
I ran into this making a quilt. I was so overwhelmed with what fabric goes with what and what design that I just never started until I was chatting with my dear neighbor who said to me does it matter if the fabric goes together? If you love it just put it together! Try making a scrappy quilt. And you know what? That’s what I did! I have just finished a baby quilt for my new baby niece and I have been slowly making scrappy quilt blocks. Sure they are full of rustic charm aka mistakes but just getting started and trying was half the battle.
Break it Down into Small Goals
So back to digging a garden bed. I’m assuming we’re making a garden with only a shovel or garden fork to hand for this example because that is exactly how my first-ever garden was.
Now I’ll be honest I actually quite like digging. I can listen to an audiobook or just fire up the metal and listen to some music through my headphones and just focus on one shovel full at a time. If you look at hand digging an acre of soil as one thing that is going to look like climbing a mountain or running a marathon with no training. Break it down into small and manageable chunks. That’s how I tacked my weedy allotment. I would work from one end of the garden bed to the other, digging and removing weeds and after I had done a chunk I would plant it up so I could see the efforts of my labor. Then the next time I visited the plot I could see the veggies were a bit higher and on I went pulling weeds and digging things over.
Eventually, you will get it done, whether it is weeding, digging a garden bed, or even making compost. Keep at it little by little. A museum or art gallery didn’t acquire its collections overnight and a garden is the same. As you hone your skills, your garden will change and adapt just like you. Your garden might get bigger with more beds over the seasons or it might get smaller.
Dig In and Learn More
If this post has started ideas for your homestead, be sure to check out these related posts and helpful books:
- The Ultimate Guide To Choosing The Right Seeds To Grow In Your Garden
- How Do I Start Composting In A Small Garden?
- Landrace Gardening: How To Adapt Your Garden Plants To Local Conditions
- Grow More Food In The Space You Have With Intensive Gardening
- Will Bonsall’s Essential Guide to Radical, Self-Reliant Gardening: Innovative Techniques for Growing Vegetables, Grains, and Perennial Food Crops with Minimal Fossil Fuel and Animal Inputs
- Now Is The Time To Diversify Your Seeds
- How To Choose Vegetables To Grow In Your Garden
- Try a seed saving or gardening course
What are you going to grow in your homestead garden? Let me know over in the Facebook group
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